


New Man

by ClaraxBarton



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29959212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton
Summary: He was a human. A man. A mostly man, anyway. Down whatever percentile was his left arm, a chunk of his spinal column and a nest of neural implants.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 71





	New Man

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday, old man.

Maintenance. 

That’s what he told himself, at first.

It made it easier - gave him motivation and clemency and logic.

But then…

He wasn’t the Asset. He wasn’t a tool to be  _ maintained _ . 

He was a human. A man. A mostly man, anyway. Down whatever percentile was his left arm, a chunk of his spinal column and a nest of neural implants. 

The rest of him, though…

This was a thing. He remembered it, remembered  _ him _ in vague and unsettling blinks of the past. The past or maybe dreams? Sometimes it mattered to him, trying to figure out if they were real or false. Sometimes he wanted them all to be false, wanted them all to be things his own brain wove together because - because there was something to that, wasn’t there? If his brain was trying to craft a world of domesticity and vanity instead of - instead of his eighty years of violence?

In the end, in the  _ now _ , it didn’t so much matter. Real or false, he was here.

He being…

Not Bucky.

Not the Winter Soldier.

Not the Asset.

Not James Buchanan Barnes.

Not - 

There were so very many things and people he was  _ not _ .

Sometimes it felt like he was backed into a corner, the detritus of his lives piled around him, rotting away with the rest of the corpses he had littered the world with.

And sometimes, sometimes the things and people he wasn’t was a barrier or a lifeline or a  _ ladder _ . 

Sometimes the ladder led him down, down, forever down. Sometimes, rarely, oh so rarely, it led him up.

Gave him fresh air and perspective and - 

Not hope. That word was too fragile, too foreign. A baby bird that had to be cradled in hands not his own.

But something.

He felt  _ something _ , to know all the things and people he had been, to know he - 

To know. 

Really, that was all it came down to. Everything and nothing, knowledge.

Looking in the mirror now, he smoothed his hair back. He’d cut it too short. A chop job to get rid of the length, and then he’d kept shortening it to even it out and - and it had felt somehow meditative and cathartic, to trim and trim and trim.

Short enough, in the end, that he couldn’t really tame it. Not like - 

Dirty mirror, no matter how many times Bucky cleaned it. Combing his hair, fingers sticky sweet with pomade. Steve on the bed, sneering and blushing and calling him a peacock, sneaking glances and glares in equal measure. Bucky smirking and preening like the peacock Steve accused him of being. Tucking his hair just so over his forehead, behind his ears. Perfect.

Not like that. Like then. Like  _ them _ .

This - this was him, now. Just him, all him. Hair too short to make perfect. 

And when he looked in the mirror now, it was just him.

Alone in a dressing room with too bright lights overhead, beige walls and beige carpet and -

It was real.

This was real.

_ He _ was real.

The suit was cut differently. Of course it was.

It didn’t align with any memory or dream.

And that was - good, he decided.

The trousers sat just below his waist, the inseam too short to wear any higher. The fit was so different than - than trousers he had ever worn before, for any reason. Certainly different than the tactical trousers of before, than fatigues or tuxedos or - or anything.

This wasn’t a uniform. 

This suit wasn’t even a proper  _ suit _ . 

Trousers of charcoal wool and a jacket, a blazer, of a kind of tweed, gray and lavender and brown in soft tones and a softer hand.

A white shirt, buttoned all the way up until, until he ran his fingers, his right hand over the collar and slipped the top button free. Let himself breathe.

Stared at the vulnerable flesh of his neck for a long, long time.

A knock on the thin door of the dressing room startled him.

That was a novel enough sensation to force him to set aside - everything else.

“Sir?”

It was the sales assistant. Prissy and put together and eerily nostalgic. He’d wanted to heap loads of garments into the dressing room, had said something about proportions and fit and his eyes glittered when he looked over his shoulder but - 

Not with avarice. Not with any kind of plan any more nefarious than trying to find the perfect fit.

“Yes?”

“Do you need help with anything?” The sales assistant asked.

He stared at himself in the mirror again.

He couldn’t recognize the man staring back at him.

The disparate parts were familiar enough, of course but - 

But taken as a whole, this man wasn’t one he had ever seen before.

He tried a smile, let his mouth curve naturally, just a little. Crooked, the left side wanting to tick a shade higher and - 

It felt okay. 

He didn’t know who he was.

But he’d climbed the ladder.

And what the hell was the point of a ladder if not to get somewhere?

“I’m good,” he decided.

_ I’m good _ .

  
  



End file.
